@Junko: considering that NAND using leading edge processes, while This uses 62nm which is quite old for flash, and the small size of those chips , i would say this doesn't pose a threat to NAND in smartphones.

I just finished designing a big (high end) digital cluster with a Fujitsu SoC, 128MB of parallel NOR for the OS and main app and a big NAND flash for data. XIP in this context is still too slow (I have very fast RAM).

Boot time is a real big issue for this application, it's good that Spansion (and Fujitsu) found a solution that looks efficient in term of performance and price.

On a smaller project based on a Renesas chip we use quad SPI with a nice thoughput, I think it will remains the main opponent of hyperbus: it's cheap and will get faster with time.

XIP will save a little bit of RAM, it's also good to have, but I think it will still be too expensive for the smartphone market.

In my opinion, it is the variety of applications that Spanision is offering which will distinguish these solutions if anything....automotive is great but when you can get into other things as well, that's where the real oppotunity lies.

The last car that I rented on a business trip had an instrument cluster that booted like a computer complete with a musical chime, a startup screen, and finally the data of interest. It also had a shutdown sequence complete with graphics and another musical chime.

Ino's question: "What if you turned on the ignition of a new car, and your instrument clusters don't show up instantaneously?" is a reality and it isn't nice. My laptop computer takes 5 minutes to boot up. How long will car instrument clusters take to boot up before consumers complain?

I think the solution lies in not booting up the cluster panel after the ignition key is turned on , but keep it in sleep mode while the engine is not running so that it can wake up instantly as sson as the ignition key is detected.

This should be possible with the very low power drwn by the MCU from the Car battery isnt it?